Paleo Quick Tip of the Day #74- The ONE thing you NEED to add to your Paleo diet!

pqtd 74 The ONE Paleo thing you need to add

Most of us now know to avoid wheat, cut way back on sugar, and eat more good fats- at least I hope you do!  These basic things, along with avoiding processed foods, walking more, getting out in the sunshine every day, and getting plenty (at least 8 hours per night) of sleep will go a long way towards making you healthy and happy.

But there is one additional thing that, if you add into your lifestyle, will make it more truly ancestral or paleo, and jumpstart your health into a really high level of health, vibrant wellness, and extreme fitness!

This thing is really easy- make sure you get a forkful or so of a fermented veggie each and every day!  Sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, pickled beets- it doesn’t really matter, and it’s probably even better to mix them up, but you just need to do it!  The probiotics in such fermented vegetables are extremely concentrated- in fact, there would be literally hundreds of times more good bacteria in naturally fermented veggies than in a probiotic supplement or pill.

And why do you need probiotics?  They are vital to building and maintaining a healthy gut biome within yourself!  A healthy gut will heal and maintain the integrity of your digestive tract, which is undoubtedly compromised badly from a lifetime of eating grains and sugars, and “leaky” in a way that makes you subject to autoimmune diseases.  And it helps to know that the number ONE killer of humans in the modern age is autoimmune disease, which is largely completely preventable with proper eating and lifestyle!

This is a really easy, cheap, and actually pleasant way to protect your health, since fermented foods are actually quite tasty and inexpensive, especially in small amounts.  Just make sure you get a naturally fermented type of veggie, not the mass market pickles and sauerkraut that line the supermarket shelves- those are “fake” pickles and sauerkraut, with no live cultures in them- they are just “flavored” with white, sterile vinegar, and are largely empty of nutrition

You could ideally culture your own, but for now just buy a couple of types from the store- Trader Joe’s has some great ones, as does Whole Foods and even standard groceries and farmer’s markets usually carry some good naturally fermented types as well.  One well known and widely carried brand is “Bubbies”; and trust me, if you have never had a naturally fermented pickle before, they are vastly superior in flavor as well as in health benefits!

Kimchi, the Korean fermented condiment is generally always the real deal, being naturally fermented, and is a great option.  Just remember, a forkful a day, keeps the doctor away, says PaleoJay!

Check out this episode!

PJSC Podcast #67 The importance of Gut Health for Mental Health!

Cook- reheat- voila!  Resistant Starch!  Gut buddy food!!

This whole subject of gut health, or of a healthy, diverse flora of colonies of diverse microbes within the human intestine is becoming a subject of huge interest- almost a Paleo Microbe Diet in and of itself!  Sure, WE need to eat healthy, real, nutritious foods...

But so do our gut buddies!  And they need food that we can’t even digest, so that they can continue to help us in our mutual symbiotic relationship- they do so much for human health and wellness, both physical AND mental, that this is a huge new realm of largely uncharted potential!

Everything is not, and probably will never be known about these bacteria that live within us, but very much already IS, and what they do for us is irreplaceable!  Some bacteria produce butyrate, which is a crucial ant-inflammatory agent.  Others produce vitamins, and digest short chain fatty acids, prevent the growth of harmful, infectious bacteria, and actually can determine whether or not we are lean and fit or fat!

And all of this is just some of what we already know- there is very much that we as of yet do not.  But suffice it to say that, the importance of a healthy gut is every bit as much important as, say, any other healthy organ in the body!  In fact, the gut and its biome are every bit as much important as our liver, or kidneys, or... you name it!  The gut can be thought of as a forgotten organ.

There have been experiments where fecal transplants are performed- a bit of healthy bacteria from the gut of a healthy subject is put into that of a fat one...

And the fat person becomes slim and healthy!

This has been done repeatedly with mice, and now also with humans!  And this transplantation of bacteria is also very effective against disease as well- ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, and my main point of this post is- autism and other forms of mental irregularities.

In case you’re thinking “Oh well, this is just nut-case PaleoJay speaking...” here is a link from the Mayo Clinic backing me up-
http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-updates/digestive-diseases/quick-inexpensive-90-percent-cure-rate

Children with autism is a new epidemic, with 1 in every 50 children afflicted.  Just 10 years ago it was 1 in 1000, and 15 years ago, 1 in 10,000!  We are talking huge, growing epidemic here- think Black Plague or something along those lines.

It appears that the guts of children, exposed to a bad, modern Western diet of processed foods and sugars, lots of gluten that destroys their gut lining, allowing undigested food particles to migrate right into the bloodstream and triggering autoimmune diseases along with mental problems, are largely to blame.  The guts of Autistic children have been shown to have just a few strains of gut bacteria- naturally, they would be the less beneficial strains that thrive on sugar- and autistic children also have lots of gastrointestinal distress.

What to do?  A Paleo diet consisting of real foods, as made by God, not man will feed the child the best.  But the GUT needs special consideration- harken we back now to http://www.paleojay.com/2014/01/paleojays-smoothie-cafe-66-more-on.html, the subject of resistant starch that has consumed me, and other folk like Richard Nicholey and Tim Steele at www.freetheanimal.com

Adding in some resistant starch, which is easily done with Bob’s Potato Starch in your daily green Paleo smoothie, will feed the good bacteria in you and your child’s guts in the form of a prebiotic, meaning that it encourages those good gut microbes to thrive and multiply, rather than simply a probiotic, which is those microbes themselves.  The problem with probiotics, besides that they are sometimes expensive in pill form, is that they often don’t survive the stomach to get to the gut alive!

Doubly beneficially for potato starch is that if you take probiotics along with the prebiotic of the resistant potato starch, (say by having kefir in your smoothie along with potato starch), the starch seems to protect the living probiotic microbes by combining before reaching the acid of the stomach!  Talk about a double whammy!!

It’s like the old Certs tv commercial from my ancient youth-

“It’s two- two-two mints in one!!”

Well, it’s not a mint- but it is two great things in one!  Have some potato starch, my friend, and wash it down with some kefir.  Have Greek yogurt for dessert!

Your brain will thank you, from the bottom of it’s...GUT.

J

PaleoJay's Smoothie Cafe #66- MORE on Resistant Starch! EEEYAYUH!

The more I look into this resistant starch thing, the more I think it is a really big discovery!  It could be the one, single, most important ignored component of human health, both in conventional Big Medicine (no surprise there), but also in the Paleo, or ancestral health movement.

It makes sense it you think of it... we have been concentrating on the most nutrient dense, the most pure of toxins types of foods we could find- trying to replicate a diet as it would have been eaten in our primeval past, pre-agriculture- when we were taller, stronger, far fitter, and had a 10% larger brain capacity!  And all the children were above average...

In other words, we have been on a quest to find those foods that best nourish us- the human part of us.  But we have paid scant attention to the microbes in our gut that help to nourish us and keep us healthy and happy- and they are a larger part of our own bodies, by far, than WE ARE!  To quote from the upcoming title of a book by Richard Nicholey of freetheanimaland Tim Steele of North Pole, Alaska...

You’re Only 10% of Who You Think You Are

Or- 90% of each is non-human!  Yikes!  I guess we shouldn’t have been ignoring that other 90%, and be sure to give all of them, our little buddies, some nutrient dense, paleo/microbial food as well...  And so, we come to Resistant Starch.

Our paleolithic ancestors ate LOTS of indigestible plant matter, pretty much all day long, to get to the parts of the plant they could digest- stems, raw tubers, leaves, unknown little plants, and of course dirt all wound up in his mouth, and eventually, his gut!  The microbes that already resided in his gut in symbiosis used all of this plant material for food and drink, and more beneficial microbes were often introduced through the soil and other incidental dietary “additions”.

Fast forward to today, and we, uh, are not exactly partial anymore to stems, leaves, bits of nutshells, etc.... and so, we have- potato starch!!  Ta da! Bob’s potato starch is... a resistant starch!  Resistant to our own stomach digesting it, that is.  And so, it can pass right on through our stomach, unmolested, and not raising our blood sugar at all, making us feel really full and satisfied, however.  Into our intestine or gut it ends up, and our little bacterial gut buddies say “Hurrah”, and start eating it like crazy, and then...
Multiplying!  More good gut buddies!  Add more potato starch, and repeat cycle.

So, what good does resistant starch, easily added in the form of Bob’s Potato Starch available in bags almost everywhere, including at Amazon- see PaleoJay’s Smoothie Cafe recommended products!- what will this do for me, if I add the recommended 4 Tablespoons per day to my daily smoothie, whipped up in my Vitamix blender?
Well, it will help you lose weight!  I mean FAT; weight is somewhat irrelevant...  Anyway, this stuff is really filling, and takes away hunger.  But at the same time it’s not digested, and won’t add to your dietary calories.  And, it seems to assist your body in burning fat stores, and resist fat storage!  There are so many studies that have gone on, and so many currently happening, that it seems over the top, but resistant starch is being implicated in:

Lower glycemic index (blood sugar)
Increases insulin sensitivity
Lessens need for insulin in diabetics
Protects entire digestive system, helps regularity
Cuts colo-rectal cancer rates by 50%
Helps in eye health, particularly macular degeneration
Promotes brain health in aging individuals
Cuts risk of breast cancer dramatically
Very helpful in ulcerative colitis

So, why wouldn’t you buy a $4 bag of potato starch and start adding it into your daily, green, Paleo smoothie?  I mean, you could go out and eat raw, wild potatoes, bark, raw grains, green bananas (another good source that I will add to some smoothies!), and stems... but, spooning out a little potato starch from what used to be your flour bin is so much easier, and effortless, and tasteless too!  Just do it!  Try it out!!

This is the most exciting thing since I first added coconut milk to my smoothies and almost instantly lost 5 pounds I didn’t even think I had to lose!

I can’t wait for You’re Only 10% of Who You Think You Are: The Tim & Richard Book on The Gut Microbiome, Resistant Starch and More

Stay tuned to freetheanimalto find out when it’s available!

Or else just stay tuned to www.paleojay.com; I’ll let you know...

J